Off Stage Quotes & Sayings

If you go on stage with the wrong attitude, or something in your performance is off, you can lose an audience in the first minute. That first minute is crucial. — Allan Carr

We must accept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as about on a par with the earlier monkey stage. The human had to pass through those stages in its rise from the mire and slime of low organic life. It was inevitable that much of the mire and slime should cling and be not easily shaken off. — Jack London

Prince is the ultimate performer. Prince is that dude that's going to get on stage by himself, if he need to, but hold you in the palm of his hand. Like, you can't take your eyes off the man when he's on stage, and he could just be sitting there playing his guitar. — Ne-Yo

I'm not going to beat the cancer. I tried really hard ... but sometimes you're just not going to beat the thing ... I wanted to walk off the stage and say anything I thought was important; I had my hour. — Randy Pausch

Hey, look at this guy Kenny G. with his thing, walking up and down the aisles of the concert hall and running off the stage and playing the same time. It's old hat! — Jerome Richardson

I never know what I'm going to say as I walk up to the microphone. I try to be in the moment. I try to go deeper into myself. I discover things on stage that I don't discover off stage about me. — Greg Fitzsimmons

The world's crawling with stupid,
innocent girls, and I'm just one of them, self-consciously
chasing after dreams that'll never come true. I should shut the
piano lid and come down off the stage. Before it's too late. — Haruki Murakami

I nod like a trained puppy, hoping to god I'm not drooling. How am I supposed to go on stage when I can't take my eyes off her?
I think he's comatose. — Cassie Mae

Off stage, I'm very quiet and very reserved and kind of shy. — Tessanne Chin

The DARRYL part of him that exploded on stage made its spellbinding, turbulent presence most felt off stage when we made love. He was a symphony of contradiction; tender, yet fierce; sweet, yet riotous; impassioned, yet leisurely; giving, yet unquenchable. We lay there naked on the carpet a long time afterward, both too depleted - and too content - to move. — Raynetta Manees

From one perspective, we're in the early stage in artificial intelligence, but exponentials start out slowly, and then they take off. — Judy Woodruff

I had decided to be a magician well before I decided to be a writer. I was the little boy who would get up on-stage and do magic wearing a fake mustache, which would fall off during the performance. I'm still trying to perform those tricks. Now I do it with writing. — Ray Bradbury

We put too much on contemporary dancers. A lot of them cannot change styles; a lot of them can't do anything else other than run around the stage reaching and stretching in anguish to somebody off camera that I never understand who it is. But it's the teenage angst they have to live with. — Nigel Lythgoe

The big difference I think between tv and stage is definitely the immediate buzz that you get. And that's not just as an actor, as an audience member you're getting the chance to have this kind of two-way process where the actors and the audience are experiencing the same thing. With tv you often have to wait months and months down the line to actually get the pay-off. Whereas with theatre it's a very immediate thing. — Colin Morgan

Most bands, if something goes wrong, they cower and walk off stage and fire people. — Tom DeLonge

I'm actually kinda quiet off stage, a lotta people don't realize that, I was at a dinner party recently, a bunch of people that I don't know, one guy talking plenty for everybody, Me myself right and then I and then myself and mee me I couldn't tell this one about I cause I was talking about myself and Me- Meee- Mee- Me- Me! Beware the me monster. — Brian Regan

For me, style is something that I've always loved. It's more than just, "Oh I make this type of music, so I should dress this type of way." But it's very important. On the other hand, if I was on stage in a hoodie and some baggy jeans, it wouldn't give off the same feeling. People appreciate the music, but people want to see the whole visual thing. — Leon Bridges

The art of an actress is sublimated sexuality. But off the stage the fire must be able to reconvert the steam into body. — Karl Kraus

In my own mind, we are a much happier and much more functional family and a much more well balanced group of individual s both off and on the stage - in the current incarnation. — James Young

Zachary looked down into the swirling morass that was his beer as the man walked onto the stage and started to play a solo piece, the band respectfully allowing him to start off his set by staking his claim. Zachary would give him staking his claim. He had his guitar nestling close by his side, as always, the leather of the case gently touching his calf, sending an almost erotic charge through his body every time he moved like the less than innocent brush of a future lover's hand on a bare arm. — Pete Langman

I'll play until they have to scrape me off the stage. — James Young

What I do on stage, you won't catch me doing off stage. I mean, I think deep down I'm still kind of, like, timid and modest about a lot of things. But on stage, I release all that; I let it
go. — Selena

If I was trying to destroy this country, what I would do is find a way to drive wedges between all the people, drive the debt to an unsustainable level, and then step off the stage as a world leader and let our enemies increase while we decreased our capacity as a military person. And that's what [Hillary Clinton] doing. — Benjamin Carson

I sort of dreamed about directing before my career as an actor took off. I've directed stage before in so many capacities on tours. I put that together. You have to. Otherwise, it's your statement. It's your voice, and that has to come through. — Justin Timberlake

To my astonishment, everything that I had assumed was now questioned by the findings. What started off as a search for identity that appeared to be purely Scottish in origin ended up as a discovery of my migrant roots - indeed an understanding that almost all of our families, at some stage, have been migrants - and my European roots. — Gordon Brown

Thousands of men breathe, move, and live; pass off the stage of life and are heard of no more. Why? They did not a particle of good in the world; and none were blest by them, none could point to them as the instrument of their redemption; not a line they wrote, not a word they spoke, could be recalled, and so they perished
their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than the insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal? Live for something. — Thomas Chalmers

Somebody like Bowie was so interesting because when you got him off stage, he was like a businessman. But on stage, he was just dazzling. It was like watching butterflies grow. — D. A. Pennebaker

At the end of the seven years, 'Family Ties' voluntarily went off the air. And, we went off as the #1 show on TV that week. We cut down the nets on stage 24 and moved on with the rest of our lives. Always to carry with us the blessing of what we had gone through together. — Gary David Goldberg

I love playing with a full band, but there's just like a different feeling up on stage when you're playing with a smaller group. It's easier to play off each other. — Kris Allen

Acting on stage is a living organism you can never pin down, and I believe the audience feeds off that, too. — Hattie Morahan

When I was 16 or 17, I saw Lenny Bruce being taken to jail. They took him off stage because he talked about race. — Paul Mooney

If we can contain and monitor animal viruses at an earlier stage - when they're first entering human populations, preferably before they've had a chance to become human-adapted, certainly before they've had a chance to spread - we can head off pandemics altogether. — Nathan Wolfe

Whether it's writing songs, being on stage, being interviewed, meeting fans - I just try to be myself, which is kind of exhausting because it almost feels like it never shuts off. — Halsey

Take that rage, put it on a page, take the page to the stage, blow the roof off the place. — The Script

I screwed my knee up once because I fell off the stage. — Zakk Wylde

I don't know, people take chances on stage. It's a big free speech zone, a comedy show. So sometimes things happen, you say things that are a little bit off the edge. — Drew Carey

The talking shows allow me to come out of my cave and that's why those shows go on for so long. I hate walking off stage. Sometimes I walk off and I miss them as I'm walking off the stage. I wonder if they'll let me go another hour. That's why I do it: to communicate, to get points across. — Henry Rollins

Last tour my bass rig was breaking down every other night. That was a pain. We would get on stage and Trey would count off the song, and I'd play the first note and nothing would be there. Those guys would just roll their eyes. — Mike Gordon

I'm very quiet off stage. — Cilla Black

I never wanted to go longer than five years off the stage. Not necessarily musicals, but just doing a play or something. — Hugh Jackman

I go around with my books so much and I love to perform on stage, to remind everybody that the lights are off, the phones are off, and for this hour, it's going to be like your mother reading to you. We're going to remember why we love stories. I think that gets lost in over-intellectualizing. — T.C. Boyle

I narrate the story but he dies off-stage between commercials. A washing machine ad later, we are dressed in our funereal best. We sniffle and indulge in product placement for Kleenex. The credits roll. — Thomm Quackenbush

I was the first one to allow a projectile to come off of the stage and into the audience. And I kind of take responsibility for the mosh pit. — Gallagher

I'm not a comedian, but I love the comedians who know when to get off the stage. — Topher Grace

I find the theatre faintly embarrassing for the actors performing on stage. It seems rather showy-off in an undignified way. — Charles Saatchi

I like the minute when I can get off the stage and go home, and I know I've done a good job. — Chelsea Handler

I am honestly very intimidated when I meet new people and they expect me to be the onscreen Vir. On stage, I say a lot of things I might never say in real life; I am never the life of the party. People are quite surprised to see that I am more of a quiet artiste off stage. — Vir Das

My philosophy is that the people around us are there doing as much work if not more work behind the scenes and they're the last people you would ever be unkind to, so I hope I'm not a diva off stage. — Renee Fleming

I once heard a woman laugh at that most tragic moment in all drama, the off-stage shot in "The Wild Duck," and I afterward had her killed, so there will be no more of that out of her. — Robert Benchley

I enjoy going on stage knowing that there's going to be that vulnerability and that transparency and hopefully things will be realized or accomplished or that confidence will be revealed. I think that's another element that people like about shows: in addition to hearing the songs that they love, I think there are some people who really get off on connecting with what's happening right now. — Jason Mraz

You can be in an acting class all you want, but you don't fully learn until you get off that stage and in front of a camera. — Nicholas Lea

I just get excited doing shows. Off stage I am actually very feeble and must be spoon-fed because my hands are too brittle. — Dane Cook

Some people have a fear of being on stage. I have a fear of coming off it. — Noel Fielding

Always drawn to the theatric, Bowie also performed in stage productions of "The Elephant Man" and just recently collaborated on "Lazarus," an off-Broadway musical that's a sequel to his 1976 role in the film "The Man Who Fell To Earth." — David Bowie

That's why I've never thought of retiring because I do it all the time whether on the stage or off. I found that in a precarious situation, a smile is the shortest distance between people. When one needs to reach out for sympathy or a link with people, what better way is there? — Victor Borge

For what is more foolish than for a man to study nothing else than how to please himself? To make himself the object of his own admiration? And yet, what is there that is either delightful or taking, nay rather what not the contrary, that a man does against the hair? Take away this salt of life, and the orator may even sit still with his action, the musician with all his division will be able to please no man, the player be hissed off the stage, the poet and all his Muses ridiculous, the painter with his art contemptible, and the physician with all his slip-slops go a-begging. Lastly, you will be taken for an ugly fellow instead of youthful, and a beast instead of a wise man, a child instead of eloquent, and instead of a well-bred man, a clown. So necessary a thing it is that everyone flatter himself and commend himself to himself before he can be commended by others. — Erasmus

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams. — James Hampton

I've just never been the kind of actor that things have stayed with. I've never needed to carry a character off stage. — Morgan Freeman

When Adam arrived behind the stage, the entire band was waiting in the wings. Their pointed glares bounced right off him. Adam didn't give a shit if they were pissed. He was in love. — Olivia Cunning

Back then he'd hammered out rags as rough as the planks that made up that schoolhouse stage. Over the years he's taken a saw and rasp to those tunes and smoothed them at the edges, sanded them slowly over time with finer and finer grit paper, and applied a polish to them. The songs are comfortable now. People can take their shoes off to dance without fear of a spike in the foot; they can lie back on that smooth and waxed wood to take a nap in the afternoon or make love all night long. Oliver sees himself as a carpenter, a craftsman putting notes and melodies together, fitting them when they will, stepping back to rest and reconsider when they won't. — Richard J. Alley

Acting is ephemeral. You can't hang it on a wall. You can't throw it off. And you can't bring it out of a closet. It's there one night and it's gone the next, at least with stage acting anyhow. — Charles Durning

The best shows I play, I almost don't even remember off the stage. — Jenny Lewis

Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You've play'd, and lov'd, and ate, and drank your fill:
Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age
Comes titt'ring on, and shoves you from the stage. — Alexander Pope

I assume you have a reason for manhandling my mate?" Cool words but his amusement was apparent.
"Riley likes Mercy," she stage-whispered, trying to twist around to look at her mate. "But she told him that h - oomph." Riley set her on her feet without warning.
She swayed, but Judd's hands on her hips kept her upright. Pushing her hair off her face, she leaned into her sexy Psy mate and smirked at Riley. "Sooo ... "
"Judd." Riley ignored her. "You're obviously not interesting enough for my sister - she's got way too much time to poke her nose into other people's business."
Judd wrapped his arms around her from behind, his chin on her hair. "I'm more interested in you and Mercy. — Nalini Singh

An audience can really lift you right up off the stage. — Captain Beefheart

I had a bad experience doing public speaking at school. I had to talk about a pen for five minutes and it was really hard work. I couldn't wait to get off the stage. — Karl Pilkington

The thing you have to remember about artists...is never to trust their immediate response. Whatever the news, their reaction will be self-protective. The mask goes on, and you see only what they let you see. These creatures carry their emotions around in a violin-case, reserving their only honest expression for the public stage. In private, they turn emotion on and off at will. Never believe an artist when he weeps or declares love. It's all a grand performance. Treat their upsets as you would a child's tantrums. Console, then instruct. Show compassion when it's called for, firmness when it runs out. Give them an illusion of your love for them - but never love itself, or they will devour you. — Norman Lebrecht

If somebody doesn't have any talent, get off the stage! you're wasting my time. — Elaine Stritch

I don't get recognised until I'm on stage, and then I can walk off and forget about it. It's great. — Rick Astley

Coming from sitcom television and coming from music you burn up every single second. You don't leave anything there. You burn it up and you pass out when you walk off stage, so I took that concept into acting. — Will Smith

I can't wait to get off the stage, because I've got some LifeSavers in my pocket and pineapple is next! — Mitch Hedberg

But when I go off stage I don't have a deck of cards with me all the time. — David Copperfield

Well, I quite like animals, but theyre unpredictable. I mean, look at old whats-his-name in Vegas. Tiger dragged him off the stage, you know? The guy brought up tigers. Theyre quite unpredictable. — Robbie Coltraine

Next thing you know she'll be on the bus and selling T-shirts in the parking lot, showing off her boobs to get in the stage door."
"At least she has boobs to show," Jess said.
"I have boobs," Chloe said, pointing to her chest. "Just because they're not weighing me down doesn't mean they're not substantial."
"Okay, B cup," Jess said, taking a sip of her drink.
"I have boobs!" Chloe said again, a bit too loudly
she'd already had a couple of minibottles at the Spot. "My boobs are great, goddammit. You know that? They're fantastic! My boobs are amazing. — Sarah Dessen

Pages were always supposed to be off-camera - we were supposed to be invisible. But I had a moment where I saw a kid who was ready to flip himself out of the balcony, so I ran down and grabbed him and put him back in his seat. I remember the stage manager taking me aside and saying, "Can you please never do that again? I know you were saving his life, but we have you in the shot." — Anne Sweeney

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator. — Confucius

I want to get to the stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What's the point of that? Simply that I want nothing but emotion given off by it. — Pablo Picasso

I was on stage and I was like I will pay someone to do my time, not only will I expect NOT to be paid, but I will pay someone if I can run off stage right now. It was so bad. — Julia Sweeney

I have a hard time narrowing things down to ten or 12 songs. If I walk off stage in anything less than two hours, it just feels strange. It feels early. — Chris Cornell

Egoism of the ignorant stage (ignorance of the true self) is considered live egoism. It becomes lifeless after attaining knowledge of the Self. If one takes the side of this lifeless egoism that, "I am not like that"- it will become alive again. Lifeless egoism is to be disposed off; it is not to be protected. — Dada Bhagwan

I was singing in a mall, and I picked a girl to come up onstage with me. As I was grabbing her hand, I fell off the stage. It felt like I was in the air forever, flying like Superman. — Aaron Carter

How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don't you ask him? And besides, maybe we'd all like to be like Miles, and just haven't got the guts. — Dizzy Gillespie

Eventually as a teenager, I was pulled up on stage by James Brown's saxophone player, Maceo Parker, during one of his concerts and scatted on his stage for 20 minutes. After I was done, Maceo's bass player got down on one knee as if he were proposing, took a string off of his bass guitar and coiled it up around my ring finger. He hushed the crowd and said into the microphone, "Wendy, from this day forward you are married to music. You have a gift from God. You must devote your life to using this gift or else you will deprive the world of something so special." I got the chills. — Wendy Starland

I cut the ribbon in Paris, and everyone in Paris speaks French - maybe you knew that. But I'm from Tennessee, and Tennessee girls don't speak French. So suddenly I'm stuck onstage with Minnie and Mickey and everyone is yelling at me in French - I guess they're telling me to get off the stage, but I didn't know what they were saying at the time, so I start dancing with Minnie and Mickey like on the show and finally my aunt comes and gets me off. — Miley Cyrus

I have been fully involved in designing my stage shows; it's important to me to do something really unique and almost off-the-wall to bring the music and the visuals together. I love design and actually went to school for a bit for graphic design, so it isn't so much 'pressure' for me; it's a way to be creative, and I really enjoy it. — Afrojack

I'm a mezzo-soprano, so the whole diva thing ... I'm not the kind of performer who puts on a persona off-stage as well, and the days of arriving with steamer trunks and hat boxes are over. — Joyce DiDonato

What defines greatness is when you hold all the records and what you mean to your fans, on and off the field, because that is who ranks you as the greatest receiver of all-time. The guy that holds all the records, the guy that has set the stage for all of us, you have to give it to Jerry Rice. — Donald Driver

If you get up on stage and brag, I don't think that's very brave. It's braver to get up and take your clothes off. And I do that every night. — James Blunt

When you improvise, you work off the laughs from the audience, but when you step on stage to do standup, it's silent. — Aubrey Plaza

I love working with really early stage startups where the outcome is still in doubt. Maybe they'll go on to greatness, or maybe they'll never get off the runway at all. — Sam Altman

We were at the stage where in a very short period of time, one of the world's biggest banks would have to shut the door and switch off the electricity. — Alistair Darling

I've always liked it about the Greeks that they kept the violence off the stage. — Donna Leon

It has been a whirlwind really, it all happened so quickly! I auditioned for Australian Idol for the 3rd time ... to see where I was and if I had improved with my singing; and the next thing I knew in the final 12 and it went nuts from there - I walked straight off stage at the finals into a press conference and didn't have a days rest 'till New Years Day. — Kate DeAraugo

I live on a boat two months out of the year, and if I did not have that then I don't know how I'd be able to handle all this ... I am a very intense person on stage. I have to remember why I am there, what I am doing. You can spend all day backstage preparing for the show and lose sight of why you are doing this. Off stage, I am a very simple kind of guy. I live my life in flip-flops. — Kenny Chesney

Because I am a part of the Big Picture, I do matter and substantially so. Because I am only a part, however, I am rightly situated off to stage right - and happily so. What freedom there is in such truth! We are inherently important and included, yet not burdened with manufacturing or sustaining that private importance. Our dignity is given by God, and we are freed from ourselves! — Richard Rohr

We survive our way through basketball hoping the # Lakers will survive and we hope for the # Kings and for the # Ducks and we want them all to succeed but if you are a true fan and especially if you are a # Dodgers fan deep down inside you are saying please get out of the way, get off the stage, here come the DODGERS! — Vin Scully

I can sleep anywhere! I can come off stage during the interval of a play, lie down for four minutes then wake up feeling better. — Helen McCrory

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only when he was off, he was acting. — Oliver Goldsmith

I think the ultimate goal is that when we're off-stage, we know everything our character is thinking. Hopefully when we are on-stage, our thoughts are our character's thoughts because we really know that much about them. — Sarah Steele

Both my sisters and I were in Stage Door plays, and we did that together, just in, like, little small plays together. And we did that, and it was really fun, and we kinda did commercials, and it kinda took off from there. It was great; it's what I love. — Joey King